This is the sort of book which takes much of a man's lifetime to produce and which can be read again and again with profit and pleasure. In effect it is an analysis of medieval Latin literature as a major stage in the transition from the Graeco-Roman classics to the modern vernacular literatures. No forbidding catalogue of periods, authors, and works, but literary criticism and literary history by a thoughtful scholar at home in classical, medieval, and modern literature, this is a powerfully presented and richly informative study of medieval standards, values, assumptions and literary conventions.--The Virginia Quarterly Review We have in [this work] a vast store of significant learning, and many new and important insights into the humane literary heritage and its precarious transmission.--Francis Fergusson, The Hudson Review A balanced introduction to Curtius studies, putting this masterpiece in context as the work of a German academic mandarin whom family history, character, and intellectual training made an advocate for an elite European cultural cosmopolitanism.--Sixteenth Century Journal
